


Third Strike

by OssaCordis



Category: True Detective
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 18:05:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2397785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OssaCordis/pseuds/OssaCordis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The first strike against Rustin Cohle is the way he shoulders into homicide without so much as a polite "How-d'ya-do?"</i>
</p>
<p>Or, Marty Hart's litany of complaints against Rust Cohle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Strike

_"Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes." - Friedrich Nietzsche_

* * *

The first strike against Rustin Cohle is the way he shoulders into homicide without so much as a polite “How-d’ya-do?”

Now, Marty prides himself on working his way up the ladder. He started at the academy, fresh out of college with his Bachelor’s – first in the family to earn one, another point of personal pride – and then worked third shift for a long time, living all the while in Mom’s basement and eating reheated tuna noodle casserole for dinner more nights than not. Then he met Maggie, and got married, and passed his detective’s exam. It’s all been smooth sailing from there on out. House in the suburbs with a little green square of lawn, two cars, two kids, yearly vacation to the Keys: American fuckin’ dream.

When his partner Lafitte – _always_ Lafitte, never Michael or Mike or Mikey – retires early on disability, Marty drifts for a while. He picks up the odd case, works with a few other guys in the division when they need a helping hand. The possibility of a new partner is always in the back of his mind, but it’s one of those things like – losing a parent, or getting a speeding ticket. Yeah, it’ll probably happen to you. But it ain’t worth spending too much time fretting over it until it happens. So when the call comes through from Texas that they’re sending over a man to join homicide, Marty nods and accepts it without a fuss.

That is: without a fuss, until he tries to pull Cohle’s file and finds abso-fuckin’-lutely nothing. No qualifications, no history, no citations or reports or anything to distinguish himself from anybody else.

“Fuck is this?” he asks Quesada. “Rustin S. Cohle, Texas State Police, Narcotics Division. That’s all it says.”

Quesada nods. “Yup. Files are classified.”

“Yeah, _but_ , you know what this is all about, right?”

“Nope. No fuckin’ idea.”

Police departments being more like high schools than he’d care to admit, the gossip is everywhere by Friday. And everyone has a theory about Cohle, most of them insinuating something not very nice. Marty keeps his mouth shut. It’s what his Gran would have told him to do: _Loose lips sink ships_. No point in jeopardizing the thing before it even starts.

But when he arrives on the following Monday morning and finds a man leaning against his desk, casually perusing the latest case files like he owns them, Marty can’t help but feel a little twinge of annoyance.

“You Rustin Cohle?”

The man looks up, interest barely registering on his face, and nods. “Rust’s fine.”

“Martin Hart. Marty.” They shake hands, because that is what you’re supposed to do in these situations. “I guess we’re partners.”

“I guess so.” His Texas drawl is thick and slow like molasses, and it seems to take a great deal of effort for him to speak. “Just readin’ your report on that double homicide near Abbeville last month.”

“Case is closed,” Marty says, holding out his hand for the file. Cohle silently sets it back onto the stack of reports. “And that’s your desk. Over there.”

“Hmm.” And he slides off Marty’s desk and ambles around to his own chair like he has all the time in the world to take five steps.

It’s not the most auspicious of starts.

* * *

 The second strike against Cohle is the unblinkingly wary expression that’s permanently fixed to his face. It’s a look that sends shivers up the spines of more than a handful of suspects, and at least as many colleagues. And yet…

Well. There’s no two ways about it. Even Marty admits: Rust is _pretty_. Too pretty to be murder police, anyways. Annoying swoosh of hair tumbling low over his forehead, and neatly fitted button-downs, like some J.C. Penney men’s department mannequin.

But his shirts are so new that the creases from lying in store packaging haven’t flattened out yet, and he never buttons the top button, like _he’s too cool for it_ , Quesada complains – or rather, unaccustomed to it, Marty thinks. At lunch one day, Kathleen says he looks like a movie star, and Marty snorts, though he knows it’s true.

Later – _much_ later – when Marty has spent enough time in Rust’s condo to snoop through all his drawers and closets – he will know better than to accuse Rust of any form of vanity. For God’s sake, the man owns a single snaggle-toothed comb, and _maybe_ four nice shirts which he rotates through in a workweek, or as it occurs to him to do the laundry. When he dresses and washes up in the morning, he somehow manages to avoid making eye contact with himself. Not that Marty blames him. There’s a look in his eyes, like a dog that’s been kicked too many times and is always on the lookout for the next boot.

“He’s queer,” Joe from vice squad says, two beers in on a Wednesday night at the bar. It’s not long after Rust’s arrival in Louisiana. “He’s gotta be.”

“How d’ya reckon?” Marty asks. He’s staring down the barrel of an empty bottle, wondering if he should go home now or call Lisa instead.

“He’s just… he’s gotta be. Maybe that’s why he was transferred.”

Marty tips the bottle over his mouth to drain the last dregs of foam. “He’s a strange one, alright. I’ll give you that.”

“That’s not what I mean. There’s strange, and then there’s… whatever he is, man. He’s got a face you just want to punch the smirk off of.”

Marty thinks this is unwise, as beaten dogs are as likely to bite as cower when provoked.

Late Thursday morning, as Marty slumps hung-over-and-hangdog into his chair, Rust just coolly stares at him over the barrier of paperwork that separates their desks. Based on that gaze alone, he would swear up and down that the cagey fucker knows exactly what everyone is saying behind his back. And – damn him, unlike every other person on Earth with a sense of self-preservation – he doesn’t seem to give a single fuck.

* * *

The third strike against Rust is the way he insinuates his way into Marty’s life until Marty flat-out forgets that there was ever a time beforethey were partners.

After Rust leaves – quits – beats the _shit_ outta Marty while still holding back, Goddamn it – Marty realizes what a huge hole has been torn in his life. There are the little things that he misses: eating quarter-pounders and fries on the hood of the car while taking a break from a case, and listening to the bizarre logic of Rust’s musings as they sped down the highway with sirens blaring. The awkward dinner dates where he and Maggie had made a game out of trying to get the poor bastard to crack a genuine smile. Someone to watch Monday night football with, even if Rust’s eyes never quite focused on the TV. And then there are big things that hurt even more: the secret that sits heavy and sick in Marty’s heart – even more so since he bears it alone now.

He’s too old to start over, he tells himself. It’s not easy to try to make your way alone through the world again, after so many years of leaning on others. He imagines that being taken off a ventilator and breathing on your own again feels a little similar. Or tearing off a Band-Aid and exposing new skin: pink and thin and fresh, but not necessarily in a good way.

There’s a Jim Thompson paperback that he borrowed from Rust and never quite got around to returning. It sits on the coffee table, and then goes into a cardboard box when Maggie gets the house and he moves out, and then onto a shelf in his new condo. He insists on filling the condo with bookcases – even though he’s not much of a reader – and framed pictures of fishing trips and vacations nailed to the wall, and knickknacks, just to prove to himself that he is _not_ Rust, and that is fine. He is different. Different… _better_.

In the end, Maggie sells the house. It pisses him off, at first, until he has time to adjust to the idea.

At work, he’s assigned a new partner: Chris is not quite straight from the academy, but he’s young enough to abruptly make Marty feel old. It’s probably how he made Lafitte feel back in the day, when he first became a detective. Like how Rust _never_ made him feel, despite being a good seven years younger. But then again, Rust was always like a ninety-year-old in a young man’s body.

His heart is no longer in the work. It sickens him. He retires.

If approaching forty feels like running off of a cliff, then fifty feels like hitting bottom.

But fifty comes and goes, and the world doesn’t end. His new business pulls in a respectable amount of work, and he feels pretty good about it. He and Maggie reach a certain point where things between them are… _settled_ , he thinks, is perhaps the word for it. Maisie and Audrey keep in touch, not as often as he’d like, but more often than he honestly feels entitled to. So when he sits alone at night, TV volume on low and AC quietly clicking off and on in the background, he can’t quite figure out why he still feels so empty.

It’s astonishing how quickly he goes from startled to annoyed to resigned when he sees Rust’s truck in his rearview mirror.

“Marty.”

“Rust.”

“Long time.”

Marty nods. “Long time.” What else is there to say? Rust looks like he’s been to Hell and back. Which is saying something, ‘cause the dickhead almost always looked immaculate, in spite of everything. Not anymore.

As Marty follows Rust’s truck to the bar, he drums his fingers against the steering wheel in nervous anticipation. The last time he saw Rust, they were both bloodied and bitter. He wouldn’t be surprised if this meeting ends that way, too. And yet… he’s missed Rust, all through this last decade. And it feels like something has slotted back into place inside of him.

He’s no longer lost.


End file.
